@inproceedings{NoethMaierHaderleinetal.2007, author = {N{\"o}th, Elmar and Maier, Andreas and Haderlein, Tino and Riedhammer, Korbinian and Rosanowski, Frank and Schuster, Maria}, title = {Automatic Evaluation of Pathologic Speech - from Research to Routine Clinical Use}, series = {TSD 2007, 10th International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue, Pilsen, Czech Republic, September 2007.}, booktitle = {TSD 2007, 10th International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue, Pilsen, Czech Republic, September 2007.}, publisher = {Springer-Verlag}, pages = {294 -- 301}, year = {2007}, abstract = {Previously we have shown that ASR technology can be used to objectively evaluate pathologic speech. Here we report on progress for routine clinical use: 1) We introduce an easy-to-use recording and evaluation environment. 2) We confirm our previous results for a larger group of patients. 3) We show that telephone speech can be analyzed with the same methods with only a small loss of agreement with human experts. 4) We show that prosodic information leads to more robust results. 5) We show that text reference instead of transliteration can be used for evaluation. Using word accuracy of a speech recognizer and prosodic features as features for SVM regression, we achieve a correlation of .90 between the automatic analysis and human experts.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{HaderleinEysholdtRiedhammeretal.2007, author = {Haderlein, Tino and Eysholdt, Ulrich and Riedhammer, Korbinian and N{\"o}th, Elmar and Rosanowski, Frank}, title = {Automatisierung des Postlaryngektomie-Telefontests (PLTT)}, series = {Aktuelle phoniatrisch-p{\"a}daudiologische Aspekte}, booktitle = {Aktuelle phoniatrisch-p{\"a}daudiologische Aspekte}, pages = {66 -- 69}, year = {2007}, abstract = {In fr{\"u}heren Arbeiten wurde gezeigt, dass automatische Spracherkennungsverfahren verwendet werden k{\"o}nnen, um die Verst{\"a}ndlichkeit von Sprechern mit tracheo{\"o}sophagealer Ersatzstimme (TE-Stimme) automatisch zu bewerten [1,2]. In diesem Beitrag wird eine automatische Version des Postlaryngektomie-Telefontests (PLTT, [3]) vorgestellt, der einen eingef{\"u}hrten Standardtest f{\"u}r die Verst{\"a}ndlichkeit {\"u}ber das Telefon darstellt.}, language = {de} } @inproceedings{RiedhammerHaderleinSchusteretal.2006, author = {Riedhammer, Korbinian and Haderlein, Tino and Schuster, Maria and Rosanowski, Frank and N{\"o}th, Elmar}, title = {Automatic Evaluation of Tracheoesophageal Telephone Speech}, series = {First International Language Technologies Conference (IS-LTC 2006), Ljubljana, Slovenia, October 2006.}, booktitle = {First International Language Technologies Conference (IS-LTC 2006), Ljubljana, Slovenia, October 2006.}, pages = {17 -- 22}, year = {2006}, abstract = {The tracheoesophageal (TE) substitute voice is currently state-of-the-art treatment to restore the ability to speak after laryngectomy. The intelligibility while talking over a telephone is an important clinical factor, as it is a crucial part of the patients' social life. An objective way to rate the intelligibility of substitute voices when talking over a telephone is desirable to improve the post-laryngectomy speech therapy. An automatic speech recognition (ASR) system was applied to 41 high quality recordings of post-laryngectomy patients. The ASR system was trained with normal, non-pathologic speech. It yielded a word accuracy (WA) of 36.9\%±18.0\%; compared to the intelligibility rating of a group of human experts the ASR system had a correlation coefficient of -.88. After downsampling the 41 recordings to telephone quality, the ASR system reached a WA of 26.4\%±13.9\% leading to a correlation coefficient of -.80. These results confirm that an ASR system can be used for objective intelligibility rating over the telephone.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{RiedhammerHaderleinNoethetal.2006, author = {Riedhammer, Korbinian and Haderlein, Tino and N{\"o}th, Elmar and Toy, Hikmet and Eysholdt, Ulrich and Rosanowski, Frank}, title = {Die tracheo{\"o}sophageale Ersatzstimme: Automatische Verst{\"a}ndlichkeitsbewertung {\"u}ber das Telefon}, series = {23. Wissenschaftliche Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft f{\"u}r Phoniatrie und P{\"a}daudiologie. Heidelberg, September 2006. Aktuelle phoniatrisch-p{\"a}daudiologische Aspekte.}, booktitle = {23. Wissenschaftliche Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft f{\"u}r Phoniatrie und P{\"a}daudiologie. Heidelberg, September 2006. Aktuelle phoniatrisch-p{\"a}daudiologische Aspekte.}, pages = {51 -- 53}, year = {2006}, abstract = {Die tracheo{\"o}sophageale Ersatzstimme TE ist heute "state of the art" der Stimmrehabilitation nach einer Laryngektomie. In dieser Studie, einem Teilprojekt eines von der Deutschen Krebshilfe gef{\"o}rderten Forschungsvorhabens, ging es um die objektive Bewertung des Behandlungsfortschritts. Untersucht wurden 41 Laryngektomierte mit einer TE (Provox-Stimmventilprothese) durchgef{\"u}hrt. Ziel der Studie war es, die Verst{\"a}ndlichkeit im Gespr{\"a}ch und am Telefon objektiv zu beurteilen und zu vergleichen, um den Patienten in der Zukunft die telefonische Evaluation von zuhause aus zu erm{\"o}glichen. Zur Bewertung diente ein f{\"u}r Marktzwecke professionalisiertes automatisches Spracherkennungssystem. Es wurden zun{\"a}chst Nahbesprechungsaufnahmen des "Nordwind und Sonne"-Textes von f{\"u}nf Experten hinsichtlich ihrer Verst{\"a}ndlichkeit beurteilt. Aus diesen Aufnahmen entstanden durch Abspielen {\"u}ber ein Telefon simulierte Telefonaufnahmen. Zielkriterium der automatischen Analyse war die Wortakkuratheit WA, die mit der an Schulnoten orientierten Stimmbewertung durch die Experten korreliert wurde. Die Studie ergab eine Korrelation von -0,82 f{\"u}r die Nahbesprechungs- und -0,69 f{\"u}r die Telefonaufnahmen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die automatische Verst{\"a}ndlichkeitsbewertung von Ersatzstimmen auch per Telefon prinzipiell m{\"o}glich ist. M{\"o}glichkeiten, die Qualit{\"a}tsverluste durch die Telefon{\"u}bertragung und die somit niedrigere Korrelation zu kompensieren, werden aufgezeigt.}, language = {de} } @inproceedings{HaderleinRiedhammerMaieretal.2007, author = {Haderlein, Tino and Riedhammer, Korbinian and Maier, Andreas and N{\"o}th, Elmar and Toy, Hikmet and Rosanowski, Frank}, title = {An Automatic Version of the Post-Laryngectomy Telephone Test}, series = {TSD 2007, 10th International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue, Proceedings, Pilsen, Czech Republic, September 2007.}, booktitle = {TSD 2007, 10th International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue, Proceedings, Pilsen, Czech Republic, September 2007.}, publisher = {Springer-Verlag}, pages = {238 -- 245}, year = {2007}, abstract = {Tracheoesophageal (TE) speech is a possibility to restore the ability to speak after total laryngectomy, i.e. the removal of the larynx. The quality of the substitute voice has to be evaluated during therapy. For the intelligibility evaluation of German speakers over telephone, the Post-Laryngectomy Telephone Test (PLTT) was defined. Each patient reads out 20 of 400 different monosyllabic words and 5 out of 100 sentences. A human listener writes down the words and sentences understood and computes an overall score. This paper presents a means of objective and automatic evaluation that can replace the subjective method. The scores of 11 na{\"i}ve raters for a set of 31 test speakers were compared to the word recognition rate of speech recognizers. Correlation values of about 0.9 were reached.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{RiedhammerStemmerHaderleinetal.2007, author = {Riedhammer, Korbinian and Stemmer, Georg and Haderlein, Tino and Schuster, Mario and Rosanowski, Frank and N{\"o}th, Elmar and Maier, Andreas}, title = {Towards Robust Automatic Evaluation of Pathologic Telephone Speech}, series = {2007 IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition \& Understanding (ASRU), Kyoto, Japan, December 2007.}, booktitle = {2007 IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition \& Understanding (ASRU), Kyoto, Japan, December 2007.}, pages = {717 -- 722}, year = {2007}, abstract = {For many aspects of speech therapy an objective evaluation of the intelligibility of a patient's speech is needed. We investigate the evaluation of the intelligibility of speech by means of automatic speech recognition. Previous studies have shown that measures like word accuracy are consistent with human experts' ratings. To ease the patient's burden, it is highly desirable to conduct the assessment via phone. However, the telephone channel influences the quality of the speech signal which negatively affects the results. To reduce inaccuracies, we propose a combination of two speech recognizers. Experiments on two sets of pathological speech show that the combination results in consistent improvements in the correlation between the automatic evaluation and the ratings by human experts. Furthermore, the approach leads to reductions of 10\% and 25\% of the maximum error of the intelligibility measure.}, language = {en} } @article{HaderleinRiedhammerNoethetal.2008, author = {Haderlein, Tino and Riedhammer, Korbinian and N{\"o}th, Elmar and Toy, Hikmet and Schuster, Maria and Eysholdt, Ulrich and Hornegger, Joachim and Rosanowski, Frank}, title = {Application of Automatic Speech Recognition to Quantitative Assessment of Tracheoesophageal Speech in Different Signal Quality}, series = {Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica}, volume = {2008}, journal = {Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica}, number = {61(1)}, pages = {12 -- 17}, year = {2008}, abstract = {Tracheoesophageal voice is state-of-the-art in voice rehabilitation after laryngectomy. Intelligibility on a telephone is an important evaluation criterion as it is a crucial part of social life. An objective measure of intelligibility when talking on a telephone is desirable in the field of postlaryngectomy speech therapy and its evaluation. Based upon successful earlier studies with broadband speech, an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system was applied to 41 recordings of postlaryngectomy patients. Recordings were available in different signal qualities; quality was the crucial criterion for this study. Compared to the intelligibility rating of 5 human experts, the ASR system had a correlation coefficient of r = -0.87 and Krippendorff's alpha of 0.65 when broadband speech was processed. The rater group alone achieved alpha = 0.66. With the test recordings in telephone quality, the system reached r = -0.79 and alpha = 0.67. For medical purposes, a comprehensive diagnostic approach to (substitute) voice has to cover both subjective and objective tests. An automatic recognition system such as the one proposed in this study can be used for objective intelligibility rating with results comparable to those of human experts. This holds for broadband speech as well as for automatic evaluation via telephone.}, language = {en} } @article{HaderleinRiedhammerMaieretal.2009, author = {Haderlein, Tino and Riedhammer, Korbinian and Maier, Andreas and N{\"o}th, Elmar and Eysholdt, Ulrich and Rosanowski, Frank}, title = {Automatisierung des Postlaryngektomie-Telefontests}, series = {HNO}, volume = {2009}, journal = {HNO}, number = {57}, publisher = {Springer-Verlag}, pages = {51 -- 56}, year = {2009}, abstract = {In dieser Studie wird ein objektives Verfahren f{\"u}r die Verst{\"a}ndlichkeitsmessung mit dem Postlaryngektomie-Telefontest (PLTT) mittels automatischer Spracherkennungstechnik beschrieben. 31 Sprecher mit tracheo{\"o}sophagealer Ersatzstimme (25 M{\"a}nner und 6 Frauen; 63,4±8,7 Jahre) wurden zun{\"a}chst von 11 naiven H{\"o}rern bewertet. Der vom Spracherkennungssystem ermittelte Verst{\"a}ndlichkeitsgrad wird als Prozentsatz korrekt verstandener W{\"o}rter einer Wortkette, der Wortakkuratheit bzw. -korrektheit, angegeben und mit den subjektiv ermittelten PLTT-Werten verglichen. Die durchschnittliche PLTT-Gesamtverst{\"a}ndlichkeit der 11 naiven H{\"o}rer liegt bei 47\%, die automatisch ermittelte Wortakkuratheit und Wortkorrektheit liegen deutlich niedriger (etwa 0\% bzw. etwa 15\%). Die Korrelation zwischen menschlicher und maschineller Bewertung liegt jedoch z. T. {\"u}ber 0,9. F{\"u}r den Gesamtverst{\"a}ndlichkeitswert des PLTT kann mit Hilfe der automatischen Spracherkennung objektiv und effizient ein {\"a}quivalentes Maß berechnet werden.}, language = {de} } @article{BockletRiedhammerNoethetal.2012, author = {Bocklet, Tobias and Riedhammer, Korbinian and N{\"o}th, Elmar and Eysholdt, Ulrich and Haderlein, Tino}, title = {Automatic Intelligibility Assessment of Speakers After Laryngeal Cancer by Means of Acoustic Modeling}, series = {Journal of Voice}, journal = {Journal of Voice}, number = {26(3)}, pages = {390 -- 397}, year = {2012}, abstract = {One aspect of voice and speech evaluation after laryngeal cancer is acoustic analysis. Perceptual evaluation by expert raters is a standard in the clinical environment for global criteria such as overall quality or intelligibility. So far, automatic approaches evaluate acoustic properties of pathologic voices based on voiced/unvoiced distinction and fundamental frequency analysis of sustained vowels. Because of the high amount of noisy components and the increasing aperiodicity of highly pathologic voices, a fully automatic analysis of fundamental frequency is difficult. We introduce a purely data-driven system for the acoustic analysis of pathologic voices based on recordings of a standard text.}, language = {en} }